Health quangos to be scrapped, fears over HRT link with breast cancer and how to increase your life span: guaranteed

Health ‘quangos' are among 177 taxpayer-funded bodies due to be scrapped by the coalition Government, according to a Cabinet Office list obtained by the Daily Telegraph. The paper says that about 30 bodies linked to the Department of Health will be cut or have their functions transferred back to the department, including the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Health Protection Agency.

While not all the cuts are entirely new – Pulse reported that the Health Protection Agency was to go back in July, for instance – the scale of the cuts are clearly significant, with the Daily Telegraph reporting that thousands of jobs will be lost in the overhaul.

A number of papers cover the European Medicines Agency's call for the suspension of diabetes drug rosiglitazone, including the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.

‘New fears over HRT and breast cancer link' reads a headline in the Daily Mail, citing Canadian researchers' finding that a decrease in the number of menopausal women taking HRT has coincided with a 10% decrease in cancer rates.

And finally, the best ‘increase your life expectancy' story we've seen for quite some time appears in the – you guessed it – Daily Mail.

Scientists have finally proven a theory first outlined by Albert Einstein, that time passes more quickly if you stand on a ladder.

The paper reports: ‘In a bizarre experiment using the most accurate atomic clocks ever invented, researchers showed that time ran faster when the clocks were raised by 12 inches.'

However, living in a basement isn't going to increase your lifespan by much. The effect is so small that we're told ‘it would add just 90 billionths of a second to a 79-year life span'.

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